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Music Review: Kismat Konnection

Kismat Konnection releases on July 18. A romantic comedy starring Shahid Kapoor, Vidya Balan, and Om Puri, Juhi Chawla in a special appearance, and voice overs by Shah Rukh Khan. Directed by Imtiaz Ali (who wrote Jab We Met), with music by Pritam Chakrobarty, and lyrics by Shabbir Ahmed and Sayeed Qadri.

I had a very good feeling about Kismat Konnection when I first heard of it, especially since it's based in Toronto, Canada (here is a related post on Bollywood in Canada), a city I have loved since my childhood and one I would live in for a few years were the weather any better (read: not cold). Add to this one of my favorite actresses in Vidya Balan (in a new persona, one that we haven't seen for her, and one that required she take dance lessons), and this was a film I was looking forward to seeing on opening weekend. Sadly, the soundtrack does not offer much to warrant any more excitement for the film.

The album kicks off with these lyrics from the song Aai Paapi:

If you feelin me make some noise,Ladies and gentlemen raise your voice.

It is not that I cannot appreciate banal lyrics, but Aai Paapi does not work for me at all. It is too loud and has less repeat value than I expected after having seen the trailers. The song appears in two versions and a remix.

Ba Khuda (By God) is a well written song, and is one of the two songs in the album that I like. Aatif Aslam does well at the outset, but his pronunciation of the word 'chaahte' puts Urdu to shame, which is worse given he is from Pakistan. Why he feels the need to scream while singing (especially at the beginning of each stanza), remains a mystery. Alka Yagnik is the real star of the song, the cumulative effect being tolerable.

Move Your Body by Hard Kaur is a decent dance track and belongs to the British-Asian genre. I am not a big fan of this variety of music, but the song could surely have been better and more involving. Didn't find to be tolerable in the gym even.

Roses are red, violets are blue,I want to start my love story with you.

What? Look, I still love the song 'Roses are Red, Violets are Blue' by the Danish-Norwegian band Aqua (remember them?), but I don't see how these words add any value to Kismat Konnection.

Thankfully, the track that follows is a good one. My favorite from the album, Kahin Na Laage Mann (is this love?) is beautifully sung by Mohit Chauhan and Shreya Ghosal. The English lyrics are unnecessarily, but it would be unfair to hold this against the song, in which Mr. Chauhan does as fine a job as would be expected from K.K., who has made this genre his own.

Soniye by Sonu Nigam is a decent bhangra track which leaves much to be desired for I contend that it lacks the power and bass that a song like this deserved. The English lyrics, when done right, can work wonders. In this case, however, they add much clutter.

The rest of five tracks are remixes of the songs noted above, with the one to Ba Khuda being the only one that can genuinely hold its own as a 'remix'. The rest sound too close to the base track.

So there you have it. 11 tracks, almost 50% of them remixes, and a small number of impressive tracks. Assuming he has not plagiarized this time, Pritam seems to have borrowed from his own works in the past, giving us a soundtrack that the film will have to do exceedingly well to help its audience overlook.

Two tracks make a good soundtrack not. I am seriously contemplating not seeing Kismat Konnection in the theater for its average soundtrack will not be the easiest to sit through, even with the fabulous Vidya Balan around. Afraid the music does the inverse -- at least to me -- of what was intended. Two stars for the soundtrack, then, and that too because of the kinds of penalties referees let big stars get away with given their leverage.

8 comments:

Yeah, after seeing the song promos for KK I have a feeling I'll be liking it in spite of the songs, not because of them. Unlike you, I find banal lyrics awfully difficult to appreciate, and Hinglish stuff makes me cringe in song form (although I guess it makes some sense considering it's an NRI in Canada story).

Hi Ajnabi: Thanks for stopping by. I'm not too fond of Hinglish lyrics, but when done right, they have proved to have worked pretty well.

Recently, the approach has worked well in music to Tashan and Johnny Gaddar. A. R. Rahman has seldom used it, but when he has, the results have been phenomenal, e.g. songs in Rang De Basanti and Jaane Tu...

There's a very new soundtrack that has struck the right balance too. Hope to discuss it soon.

Whenever I see Pritam's name as the music director, I run screaming in the opposite direction :-)

I'll probably wait for this one on DVD and then I can ff through the songs. Lord, I do love the ff button. I do wonder how Vidya will look opposite Shahid, not because she's old but b/c he looks like a twelve-year-old to me.

Hi Memsaab: I'm with you on Pritam. I used to like his music, but he's given us so many songs that are unoriginal, there will always be that element of suspicion with every good track he composes. Although in the case of Kismat Konnection, that ('good track') is of little concern :)

Curious to see Vidya Balan in this. I really like her playing the role of the traditional (not necessarily not empowered) woman, and this seems to be anything but, so it should be interesting.

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